


The Color of Happiness

by Tigerine (sealink)



Category: DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 05:51:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3799123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealink/pseuds/Tigerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about Aoba's yellow socks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Color of Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Aoba's birthday, April 22, 2015. Happy birthday, my blue son.

She notices before he does.

Any commotion in the street draws him to the window, or down the stone step into the genkan to peer out the door. He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, holding his breath and looking out beyond the garden wall. He doesn’t realize that his face shows his disappointment when it’s just a policeman chatting politely with the neighbor and laughing. It seems natural for him to assume that there will be laughter when they come back.

By the end of the first week, he has stopped getting up at every car that motors past, sitting at the kitchen table with a book or carefully cutting up vegetables for dinner with a child’s knife.

The postman brings a package on Wednesday, and Aoba throws open the door with a big smile. 

“Aoba,” Tae calls. “Who is it?” She steps in from the kitchen as Aoba scampers back into the house and then hides behind her dress, looking at the postman. He doesn’t answer her question. 

“He’s… had a bit of a shock lately.” She makes excuses to the postman’s slightly embarrassed face.

“It’s fine,” the postman replies, handing over the box. But he looks over his shoulder at Aoba’s crestfallen face as he goes back down the walk; his hesitant smile goes unreturned. Tae ducks her head as she closes the door.

“Aoba!”

“Granny, I thought….” He gathers up the hem of her dress in his hands.  Even though he no longer wells up at the slightest mention of his parents, he can’t bring himself to say it.

_I thought they had come back._

Tae’s face softens. “Come,” she says, walking into the living room and setting the box down on the low table. Aoba toddles after her, climbing up onto the couch and waiting patiently as she fetches a pair of scissors and opens the box.

“What is it?” Aoba says, his dismay slowly being replaced by curiosity. Scooting closer to Tae on the couch, he cranes his neck to see what is inside the box.

Tae withdraws a few hanks of yarn in a creamy lemon yellow. She slips one finger in through the bundle of fiber, testing one strand against her finger. The light catches on the spun fibers, making it shimmer as she turns it this way and that.

“What’s that for?”

“Knitting some socks.” 

“It’s nearly summer!” Aoba screws up his face in confusion.

“It takes time to knit socks,” Tae says patiently, taking the rest of the yarn out of the box.

“But winter is so far away,” Aoba counters, and his voice trails off. Tae looks at him, and she can practically see the wheels turning in his head. Will his parents return by winter?

“Time will keep moving forward, Aoba.” It’s one of those veiled responses that adults give to children when they are answering a question the child doesn’t realize they have asked.

Aoba looks up at her and then curls his hands into tight fists and nods. Tae’s easy smile prompts a similar one from him, and for the first time since his parents left for parts unknown the week before, he smiles back. It is a comforting thought. Time will keep moving forward.

\---

The first chill winds of autumn bring the socks out from where they’ve been resting, waiting their first use.

“I want to do it!”

“Oh?” Tae gets up with her hand on one knee, her breath leaving her in a big gust. Her back has been paining her more lately, but she can’t take much time to rest. One hand on each matronly hip, she looks at him. “Go ahead.”

Aoba tugs the socks on, their simple stockinette stitch clinging to his feet. His chubby calves will stretch them out, and each time they are worn, they will need to be hand-laundered. A wiggle of his toes lights up his face and he looks up at Tae. “They’re warm!”

Tae chuckles. “They should be.”

“Can you make them in other colors?”

“Like what?”

“Blue!”

Tae looks at his shaggy, long hair, the blue electric against his summer-bronzed skin. “Next year, when you are too big for this pair.”

“Yes! Thank you, Granny!”

\---

The box comes at the beginning of summer.

“I’ll get it!” Aoba careens out into the hallway, hopping down into the entryway to throw the door wide open. “Good morning!”

“Good morning!” The postman cheerfully returns, inclining his head. “I have a package.”

“Granny!” Aoba yells back into the house, running up the stairs. “There’s a package!” He stands awkwardly by, waiting as Tae signs for the box and carries it into the living room. “Is it more medicine?”

Tae checks the label. “No,” she responds with an amused look as she goes to get a pair of scissors.

“No?” Aoba frowns.

“Not medicine.” She cuts open the packing tape and Aoba, taller than last year, doesn’t have to crane his neck so far to see what’s inside.

“Yarn?”

Tae pulls out a golden hank of summer spun into yarn and sets it aside. From deeper within the box, a flash of blue catches Aoba’s eye and he catches his breath and Tae lifts the hank to his head, comparing the dye to Aoba’s natural hair color. She hums thoughtfully. “It’s very close.”

Aoba looks at her as she puts the yarn aside. “Are you knitting socks again?”

“Yes.”

“But you just made socks last year.”

“Your feet are already outgrowing them,” Tae chides him. “And this year you wanted blue socks, right?”

“Yes,” Aoba says cautiously.

“Then we’ll need blue yarn.”

Aoba’s eye falls upon the wad of yellow yarn at Tae’s hip. “Then why did you order yellow yarn too?”

“Don’t you want your grandmother to have socks?”

“Ah… I didn’t mean that…” Aoba’s blush stains his cheeks. “I guess yellow socks will be okay for me too, from now on,” he murmurs, his blush deepening.

Tae’s wrinkles deepen as she chuckles. “I like yellow. It’s the color of happiness.”

Aoba seems to look at Tae with new recognition, his eyes traveling over the blonde wood in their house, the sunny color of Tae’s dress. “Is that how you always stay happy?”

“Wearing yellow makes it hard to stay sad.” Her throat is tighter than she expects.

“Are you sad?” Aoba’s face opens up, his large hazel eyes suddenly liquid with worry. “Do… Do you miss them too?” It’s so open in his face, his obvious empathy, his desire to connect, to share the pain of losing his parents. He cannot conceive of a greater pain than this.

Tae’s eyes slide away from him, and she reaches out to him, her mouth drawn into a thin line. She doesn’t say anything, but Aoba slides his small hand into her soft one, feeling how deeply life has worn into her skin. “Don’t worry, Granny,” Aoba says. “Time will keep moving forward.”

\---

Tae arrives home from a patient’s house to find it dark and empty. She sighs and unlocks the door, sliding it open. At least Aoba remembered to lock the door this time.

The box is on the table in the living room, unopened.

“Granny!” The front door shudders open and Aoba slams it behind him with a resounding crack. “I’m home!”

Tae frowns at the breathless smile on Aoba’s face. “And where have you been?”

“Out!” he responds, folding up his gangly teenage legs to pull off his shoes with a finger. He leaves them in disarray on the floor.

Tae scowls and walks over, thumping him on the back of the head with her knuckles. “What do you mean ‘out’? I asked you where you were, coming home like that at this hour!”

“Relax, Granny,” Aoba says, raising his hands to shield himself from another sharp rap on the top of his skull. “I was just out playing a new game.” He stands up, taller than she is, and kisses her cheek. It doesn’t seem to convince her, but she can’t stay angry at him for long.

“Come help me with dinner,” she grumbles.

He follows her into the kitchen, taking vegetables from the refrigerator without saying a word. She washes them and lays them on the table, one-by-one. On the receiving end of a piercing look from her, Aoba sheepishly takes out the cutting board and a knife. He’s halfway through cutting them up when Tae addresses him again.

“So, tell me about this game you’ve been playing.”

“Oh!” The rhythmic clack of the knife against the cutting board stops as Aoba looks up, bright-eyed. “It’s really great! There’s a club that will lend you the use of a robot for a match. The game overrides your brain so you don’t move, but you go into a simulated environment and you fight other people.”

“Fight them?”

“Oh, it’s just a video game, but you get to be yourself in it. No one really gets hurt.” He begins chopping vegetables again, and the thunk of the blade against the wood is louder than before, with more force behind each cut.  

“Why do you need a robot?”

“It’s one of those Allmates, like a Coil companion.” He laughs. “Finally a good use for those things other than just sitting around and talking.” Aoba pops a piece of cucumber in his mouth and crunches it between his teeth.

Tae goes still at the sink but doesn’t turn around. The water keeps running. “You don’t have one of those. An Allmate.”

“Nah, but I’ll get one soon. I want to play this game more.”

“And what is this game called?”

“Rhyme.”

\---

The early summer evening is warm, but provides just enough light for Tae to get home from the market. The fluorescent bulb of the nearby streetlamp flickers. It is barely enough for Tae’s old eyes to make out the box, tucked behind a flower pot to make it invisible from the street. 

\---

The hospital room is cold; Tae can feel it creeping into her joints after so many hours in this chair. Visitors are not encouraged, but Tae is a good friend to basically all the medical personnel in the Old Residents’ District. They know better than to try to run her off like they would anyone else. She’s even been given a warm blanket, and she’s grateful for it.

Behind his eyelids, Aoba’s eyes are still. He is not even dreaming.

Tae stands up, stretching her back with a series of pops and clicks. Smoothing a warm hand over her lumbar region, she hobbles over to Aoba’s bedside, looking down on the bandages around his head.

“He took a pretty nasty knock to the head yesterday,” the nurse says from the door.

Tae turns to face her as she walks in, a screen held up on her Coil. Aoba’s name is mirrored on it when viewed from the other side; Tae can read it even backwards.

“Yeah,” she agrees, looking back down at the bed.

“What was he doing? To get admitted?”

 “Playing a game,” Tae responds, not taking her eyes off his body as it begins to twitch under the sheets. Aoba shifts in his sleep; the drugs that keep him still are wearing off.

“Maybe you should go home for a while,” the nurse suggests sympathetically. She closes the screen on her Coil and folds her arms over her chest, hugging herself. “We’ll call you if his condition changes.”

“Yeah.”

\---

The dishes are cleaned and put away, every surface dusted, every wooden chest oiled. Her herbal medicines and chemical compounds have been dusted and reorganized twice; pharmaceutical orders delivered without delay. Tae makes dinner, cooking for two like always, and wrapping up the leftovers like always. The sun is low in the sky when she returns to the hospital, her idle hands having no more work to do around the house.

Hospital corridors are quiet this far up, far from the bustle of the emergency clinic and birth center. The doors of each room are labeled only with a room number; without knowing the room, finding someone in this warren of rooms would take hours.

Tae walks to the end of the bed and looks at him.

Aoba is curled up on his side in a fetal position. He has tugged the blankets up, gathering them into a wad near his chest, his knuckles white. The sheets are in disarray, wrinkled and twisted around his legs. His feet are purpling in the cold air; his toes are like ice.

\---

It is too cold in the hospital again and she can’t get any rest, especially in a stiff vinyl chair.

“Granny?”

She lifts her head from where it’s fallen to rest against the wall, wincing at the pain that shoots down her spine. “Aoba?”

He picks his head up and looks around. His tongue flicks out, running over his chapped lips. His eyes move around the room, over Tae, over the railing of the hospital bed, over the IV taped to the back of his hand.  “I’m in the hospital?”

“Yes,” Tae answers. “Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”  Aoba looks down at the blood that has backed up into the IV line, a small crimson crescent against his skin. “What happened?”

Tae stands up, pressing her hand against her back. Aoba begins to sit up and Tae snaps at him. “Don’t you dare get out of bed!”

“Sorry, Granny.”

Tae stares at him for a heartbeat before moving to sit on the edge of the bed. She reaches out and enfolds Aoba’s hand in both of hers, meeting his eyes with a probing look. “Aoba,” Tae says slowly, “What _do_ you remember?”

“I… I don’t know. Everything is fuzzy.” He lifts his hand and rubs his face; the blood in the IV line falls back down into his vein. “Is Ren here?”

“He’s at home.”

Upon hearing that his Allmate is safe, Aoba breaks into a genuine smile, warm and full of love. It is like a hotpot in winter, or the coolest breeze on the hottest day of the year, something dearly missed that reappears to remind you how good it is to be alive. Tae leans forward and hugs Aoba tightly, her hands pulling at the hospital gown on his back.

“Granny? Granny! Are you okay?”

She pulls back, looking at him with wet eyes; the angry set to her jaw and wrinkles of consternation on her brow say enough. “You worried me! Such an idiot I have for a grandson!”

Aoba looks at a loss, but fortunately Tae rubs the back of her hands over her cheeks and then stands up, sniffing loudly and then fetching a tissue from a box of them near Aoba’s bedside. Aoba’s eyes follow her movements and linger overlong on the tissue box.

“So, how are you feeling?” Tae blows her nose, dabbing at it delicately. “How is your body feeling?”

“Ah, not…too bad, considering.” His fingers find the edge of the gauze wrapped around his head forehead. “I guess I hit my head?”

“Yes,” Tae says, a little quickly.

“Lucky that everything seems to be okay. Although…”

Tae folds her hands together over her belly. “What?”

“I kind of… have to… use the toilet.” Aoba’s cheeks suddenly stain pink, and Tae laughs, sniffing between chuckling.

“Here, I’ll help you out.” She lowers the railing on the side of the bed.

“Ehh? Shouldn’t we—“

“I’m strong enough to help you get to the bathroom, Aoba,” Tae fusses. “I am not some helpless old woman.”

“No,” Aoba says, his expression turning tender. “No, I guess not.”

He swings his legs out from under the sheets, extending them out into the cold air of the room. It’s worth taking inventory of his body, since he’s in the hospital. His circulation is poor; the skin of his bare calves is blotchy. But he has socks on his feet, ones with small rubber tracks on the sole to give grip. Even someone just getting to their feet for the first time in weeks can feel confident in walking across a hospital room while wearing these.

They have the hospital name on them. They are bright yellow.

“Aoba?”

“Hm?”

“Are you okay?”

He smiles and nods. He feels exhausted but somehow warmed up. “Yeah, I was just… remembering something.”

_I guess yellow socks will be okay for me from now on._

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea knocking around in my head for months. Just try to think poorly of those socks now.


End file.
